Matthew 5:22: “But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment, and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council, but whosoever shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.”
I received some correspondence from one of my readers asking about this verse and wondering if it is true that if you call you brother a fool you are in danger of going to hell. Until I really started to study the New Testament in Aramaic in earnest this passage had me baffled. Just reading this in the English translation sounds like it is a greater offense to call a brother a fool than it is to be angry with him or call him raca, whatever that might be. Why is one in danger of hell if he calls a brother a fool. If that is the case, I have a few brethren who are should be feeling the heat right now, myself included.
Let’s start first by looking at the Greek word for fool which is moros. It is easy to see that this is where we get the word moron today. It indicates someone who is uneducated or untrained but makes judgments as if he knew it all. Of course if you call someone a moron today you have really insulted him. He may not know why it is such an insult but the word itself seems to imply that you are lacking in intelligence. Pretty bad to call someone a moron but should it condemn you to hell any more than being angry with you brother without reason.
The Aramaic Bible uses the word lila for fool which has the idea of calling someone a coward who is afraid of something unreasonable. I drive a bus for senior citizens and the disabled. Recently I picked up an elderly woman to take her to a doctor’s appointment. She flew into a state of panic as I approached a bridge and insisted I take another route which was totally out of the way because she was afraid to cross the bridge. I didn’t say it out loud, but in my mind I called her a lila or a fool. I drove over the bridge anyways and I began to feel the heat of hell’s fire as I saw how I purposely brought distress on this little lady who in no way did anything to me. I later learned her son was killed in an auto accident on that bridge. Should I be condemned to hell for such an act?
How about being angry with a brother? The word used for anger in the Greek is orizo which means to provoke into anger. The Aramaic Bible uses a word parallel to the Hebrew word ka’aps which also means to provoke to anger which ends in sorrow or is generated from sorrow. This has the idea of provoking a crowd into unrest. Recently Donald Trump on his campaign trail stopped in Chicago to hold a rally at the University of Illinois Campus in Chicago (UIC). A few rabble rousers who were unhappy with Trump’s platform tried to provoke Trump and his followers to anger resulting in the shutting down of the rally. That was orizo or ka’aps. So if you provoke your brother to join you in an angry cause you will be in danger of Judgment. The word judgment in Aramaic is don which is a legal term and a reference to an earthly court.
When we in the Western Cultured 21st Century read that someone who incites his brother to anger is in danger of the judgment we think of the judgment of God. Not so were first century Jews in Jerusalem. Revolt, revolution was in the air. In fact many believed Jesus was going to over throw the Roman government. No the first century people were not thinking the judgment of God but the judgment of the Roman Empire. You incite you brother to anger against the Roman Empire and expect to face the judgment of the Roman Empire.
Next Jesus says that if you say: “Raca” to a brother you are in danger of being brought before the council which is just another word for the Sanhedrin, the religious court. The word raca is an Aramaic word, the literal meaning is to spit upon, but the accepted understanding of raca is to declare that a person is worthless. Again in Western mindset we value all life but in the first century it was not unusual to consider a person raca or just worthless, so work him to death and replace him with another. Use a raca woman sexually until she dies of abuse was no crime under Roman law. But to the Jewish mindset, all life had value. To say a person is worthless, no better than your spit is an insult to God saying that He created something worthless. This puts you in danger of the religious court or the Sanhedrin for declaring that God created something that was worthless or of no value to Him. To call someone raca or worthless you could be found guilty of blasphemy. A doctor can legally perform an abortion and by that declare the unborn child is raca worthless. Unfortunately, such a thing is legal in this country and you cannot prosecute this doctor under civil or criminal law. However, if he were a member of a God fearing church he could stand in judgment before his congregation and excommunicated.
If I called that little lady a fool or coward and drove over the bridge, I would have broken no law that would put me before a criminal or civil court. I could argue I was only trying to help her to confront her fears, I did not endanger her life in any way, yet I brought mental distress upon her. Also I would really have broken no religious law, at least according to the laws that would have brought me before the Sanhedrin. But I would be in danger of hell’s fire.
Let me explain. I had a woman today on my disability bus who was telling me of her doctor woes. At one point she said her doctor alley ooped her. I had not heard that term for years and I did not know what she meant. She explained her doctor flipped her over to another doctor. Then I remembered as a kid when we helped someone over a fence we would say: “Alley Oop.” If I had someone on the bus trying to learn English he might have looked up Alley and oop in his dictionary and concluded that doctor drove down a back street by mistake. You see the phrase Alley Oop is an English idiom that someone cannot figure out by looking up a phrase literally.
Let me make this clear, if the Bible teaches that Hell is a place of eternal torment and fire, I believe it without a moment’s hesitation. However, I do not believe this passage is referring to our eternal state. For you see there is an old Aramaic Idiom still in use today by the people of the Mesopotamian area. When you bring undo suffering, mental torment or misery upon another person they would say you are in danger of the fires of Gahanna which is what this says in the Aramaic, it does not say hell’s fires.
Gahanna is compound Aramaic word for Valley of Hinna which was a place outside of Jerusalem that was once the place that the people worshipped the God Moloch. It was there that they sacrificed their babies in the outstretched arms of an idol of Moloch and set it on fire. The people who perform this ritual were human, after all, just as those who perform abortions. As much as they tried to hide it or sugar coat it, they could not overcome their mental anguish over what they did. It always came back to haunt them in their sleep. They would play loud drums to drown out the cries of the infants as they burned to death, but they still heard those cries in their sleep. Indeed some may have been hardened as abortionist are today, but many a former abortionist or mother who offered her unborn child in exchange for her own freedom who declared that aborted infant was a raca, will tell you of the mental torment they must endure. No there is no court that will convict that mother, she will even be forgiven by the church, but she will still suffer the fires of hell or Gahanna mental anguish over declaring that infant as worthless.
Jesus was only stating a simple fact of human nature and the conscious God put within all of us. If you call a dear elderly lady a fool for being fearful over crossing bridge and you cross it to save an extra fifteen minutes, you are indeed in danger of suffering the fires of Gahanna (Aramaic idiom for mental anguish or regret).
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